Profile of Jem Bloomfield

Bio:

Dr. Jem Bloomfield studied at the universities of Oxford and Exeter, and is currently Associate Lecturer in Drama at Oxford Brookes. His research covers the performance of Early Modern drama and the various ways it has been adapted and co-opted throughout the centuries. His own plays include “Bewick Gaudy”, which won the Cameron Mackintosh Award for New Writing, and he is working on a version of Oliver Goldsmith’s comedy “She Stoops To Conquer”. His writing on arts, culture and politics have appeared in “California Literary Review”, “Strand Magazine” and “Liberal Conspiracy”. He blogs at “Quite Irregular” and can be found on Twitter @jembloomfield

Though as the mysterious knight’s identity is revealed, it turns out that the gracious Sir is a gracious Dame: the warrior is Morgause, played by Emilia Fox. So we’re embarked on another instalment in Merlin’s ongoing project to work out what women are good for/at.

One of the key questions they’ve agreed to ask the candidates is what exactly they think the Cultural Olympiad is. A silence falls over the table, before they all hurriedly agree what an excellent question that will be.

But this is the source of Boris’ power (the power pertaining to Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, and I’m not making that up) – he offers a powerfully atavistic image of a long-disappeared England for people to either adore or loathe.

“Fair is foul and foul is fair” as the witches in Macbeth chant. The only person who can save the kingdom is Merlin, armed with his own brand of magic and possibly a reliable dictionary open at the letter “F”.

There’s a fine line between criticising a show and simply describing the show you think it should have been, but when a satire so deliberately tones down reality I reckon we’re entitled to ask questions.

It rather sums up the problem which I noted last episode (and which will appear even more strongly when we turn to look at the show’s treatment of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London) that Twenty Twelve hovers oddly between making fun of the games and treating them as Unquestionably A Good Thing.

Still, nice to know the BBC’s independence is sufficiently robust (despite the continual brickbats cast at is as a state broadcaster) to put on a show like this. Even if one does wonder at times why they didn’t either do the thing rather more viciously, or not bother.

Tucker’s resignation is the two-headed calf or woman giving birth to rabbits of the modern era: it is demonstrably not natural and probably portends something really very dicey from some quarter or other.

At first glance it seems absolutely obvious what is going on here: to whit, some pretty repulsive misogyny. The potion with Catrina has to take to keep her looking beautiful has a lot in common with the centuries-old anxiety around cosmetics, a handy stand-in for the ideas that women are liars, that they spend their time trying to trap men and that there is something inherently repulsive about women’s bodies.